


A Date for the Fifth of Porax, to See the Cherries Bloom

by Tammany



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Control Freaks, F/M, Fear of Death, Gen, Mentions of Clara Oswald - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-27
Updated: 2015-12-27
Packaged: 2018-05-09 17:13:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5548670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammany/pseuds/Tammany
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I'm so happy with River and the Doctor.<br/>Really. I am. I won't say all I'd like to say, because it is the nature of the beast a dozen people would step forward who would not find that relationship as credible, adult, and character-driven as I do. But I just love what we've been given to bits, and am ready to see it resume in some credible, adult, character driven way. Since I do not trust Moffat and the BBC to give me that, I'm giving it to myself. Merry Christmas, and all that jazz. Hope some of the rest of you like it.</p><p>This takes place after the Towers of Darillium, and after River's death, and her stay at the Library.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Date for the Fifth of Porax, to See the Cherries Bloom

“Hello, Sweetie,” she said.

River. His River, hardly changed from the woman he’d left in the shining dawn of Darillium, as the soft croon of the Towers faded and was lost to cold day.

He smiled, tight and grim, eyes tired. It was done.

“You saved me,” she said, as calm and cold as he was.

“I did.”

She stepped from the transporter pad, and walked across the marble floor of the lobby, leaning over to pick up her diary and her sonic screwdriver from where he’d left them—where he’d been sure she’d see them once he pulled her from the Library memory back into existence. She flipped gently through the pages of the battered, faded book, watching the scrawled script flutter past. “Only a couple more pages. Enough to say what happened here, and then…no more.”

“No. You’ll have to get another diary,” he said.

She met his eyes. “You could get me one,” she said, quietly.

“No,” he said. “No—this time maybe it would be better if you got your own.”

“You knew how long I’d live.”

“I knew when you’d die,” he said. “That’s not the same thing…is it?”

She looked down at her body, reborn from a flicker of atomic particles—pure energy and star-dust. “No. It’s not, is it? Does this one remember how to regenerate, do you think?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“And you don’t know when this one will die, either, do you?”

“No.”

She nodded, then said, softly, “That’s why you delayed so long. It wasn’t just because you knew I’d die here. It’s because once you brought me back, you’d never again have that safety net. You’d never again know that, so long as we hadn’t had our night on Darillium, our night of the singing towers, you were in control. I could never die, until that happened. As long as it hadn't happened—I was immortal to you, wasn’t I? A death you could control, put off, delay, avoid. So long as you avoided that night—our night—you were in complete control. You had one person time couldn’t take away from you, because it already had.”

He cocked his head and made a face. “No one ever said I wasn’t a selfish bastard.”

She grinned and arched her brows. “Well. For a certain value of ‘selfish’ and ‘bastard.’” She gave a mischievous smile. “The kind that comes in hero-flavors, I suppose.”

“I’m not a hero. Just an idiot in a box.”

“Prepackaged for easy transport.”

“If you like.”

“What next?”

“I don’t know.”

She nodded. “No. I suppose you don’t. No spoilers?”

“No. And you?”

She frowned. “Not that I am aware of at the moment.”

“You knew I’d recorded your bio-print, didn’t you?”

“I’d deduced it. Eventually. When my ghost didn’t fade.”

“So you knew resurrection was possible.”

She nodded.

“And when you came to me on Trenzalore?”

“I will admit, I thought it was time you began to think. Not that it worked,” she added with a laugh.

They stood apart. In his reality only hours had passed since he stepped into the Tardis and said “Goodbye,” his body still alive with the touch of her hands, her breath on his cheek, her mouth on his. In her reality she had spent centuries pent up, like a genie in a bottle, trapped in the Library, watching over him from afar. His guardian. His lover. His prisoner.

“It took you forever, even with me dropping hints,” she said.

He nodded.

He had been secure, he thought, and counted off the centuries he’d kept her death like a burning jewel in his heart. Millennia. The years from Ten to Eleven. The centuries of Eleven’s life, including his mad dive into his own timeline to recapture Clara.

He knew why he had loved them both, now: River and Clara. He knew why he had held them close. The two women who could not die. His Impossible Girl, born again and again, the woman who could travel with him and never die—not for real. Not for keeps. Clara, who could become as he was—undying.

Well, she’d done it, and now all he had left was the story, no more real to him than Me’s life was to her—a collection of entries in his diary. A story he’d told himself. A face he could remember only from images left like breadcrumbs along his path into his own past. She had become eternal in the way stories were eternal—undying, forever adventuring, and forever gone from his grasp. Clara Oswin Oswald, the Impossible Girl, his guardian angel, his lost sister.

And now, River.

He’d cherished her—the one woman who could not die until he allowed her to. He had held the key to her survival. He’d known every day of her projected life. He’d known how long her diary should be. He’d known that, so long as he avoided Darillium, she could not ever really leave him.

For that certainty it had been worth the infrequent visits. For that perfect certainty it had been worth the distance he put between them. For that sure knowledge, he’d been willing to sacrifice the actual life they might have led.

He had spent the last twenty-four years wondering what life they might have originally led, before their timelines looped—before her death at the Library became the one set point his heart clung to. What life had they lived before he froze her in time—the one Rose who could not fade and wither. The Sarah Jane who would never die. The Donna he would never have to destroy. His River. The one woman he could trust, because the very first time he met her—she died for him, and for every minute they’d lived together.

What had the first time been like, before the loop closed? Before she became preordained?

Had he loved her madly, passionately, bravely? Had he accepted his own terror? How had it happened, in that different time before he himself shattered the cosmos and put a rip in the galaxy that settled on the wall of Amelia Pond’s bedroom?

He would never know.

What he knew was that this time through the time stream he’d loved her like a coward.

“There’s a nice place on Evagos that sells five-hundred year diaries,” he said, swallowing hard. “I get mine there.”

She nodded. “I’ll do that.”

“What are you planning next?”

“I don’t know.” She considered. “We could go home. To Darillium. I didn’t cancel the lease on the cabin, there.”

He shook his head. “Some things you can’t do over.”

“And us—are we one of those things?”

“I hope not.” Still, he heard the uncertainty in his own voice.

“You felt safe, didn’t you?” she said. “Knowing when I’d die.”

“As long as we never went to Darillium, you had to live.”

“And now?”

“And now I don’t know any more than anyone else.” He felt his face crumple into something neither a grin nor outright grief. “You could die tomorrow.”

“Can you bear it?” She breathed in deep. “Can you love me, without that certainty?”

He shook his head. “I hope so. I don’t…I don’t know.” He had lost too much, over and over and over again. He said, “I hope you can regenerate again.”

“If I can’t, we’ll have to see about fixing it.”

“It’s no promise you’ll live as long as I have.”

“There’s no promise you’ll live as long as you have either,” she said, then added, with loving acid, “Is there—sweetie?”

He shook his head.

“I’ll risk it if you will,” she grinned.

“You were always braver than me. I run.”

“Don’t,” she said, eyes tender, voice breaking. “Don’t run.” She straightened. “It takes two towers to sing.”

He nodded. “Yes. Just the right distance apart.”

“Just close enough together.”

“Surviving—through time. Through disaster. Through loss.”

“We’ve already got a head start on that, sweetie.”

He laughed, her cheek and irony catching him on the tender edge of his humor. “That we do.”

“I love you.”

“You know my name.”

“So I do.” She stretched. She fluffed her insane mane of hair. She grinned and pocketed both the diary and the sonic screwdriver. “I’m glad you brought me back in something besides that horrible space suit.”

“I knew you’d prefer to put on a show.” He grinned at her, standing back, keeping his distance.

She studied him. “What made you change your mind? In the end? What made you decide to see it through, and let me go?”

“I saw what I’d cost you,” he said, the guilt still burning, the sorrow for his greed never likely to fade entirely. “I never asked myself what it meant to you to live with a dairy that announced your mortality. A lover you suspected knew the day of your death. A man so afraid of loss he’d give up a real life to cling to the comfort of one real, avoidable, controllable death. I never asked myself what it was like to be loved by a monolith, or to carry the promise of my own death in my pocket. I never asked myself what it would mean to you to know I clung to your death as my own set point.”

Her eyes, always brilliant, filled. “I loved you anyway,” she said.

“But until then, I never let myself love you. Not really. I never let your life matter more than my control over your death did.”

She gulped. “I…see…. And now?”

“I don’t know.”

She nodded, then said, hoarsely, “You know how to find me when you want me, sweetie.”

He laughed, a dry, husky sound. “And you’ve always been able to contact me whenever you liked. Don’t be afraid to just…drop in.”

They laughed, the brilliant memory of her dropping across the void of space into his Tardis glowing between them.

“I’ll do that,” she said, and turned, and walked toward the little jump-ship he’d arranged to have land on the Library. The Vashta Nerada had been quite reasonable—and all for a few crates of vat-raised beef. It had been centuries since they had last fed.

As she reached the ship, he choked, and stepped forward, and called to her. “River?”

She turned. “What, love?”

He paused, then said, hoarse and weary, “I’m afraid.”

“Of what?”

“Losing you.”

She smiled—a sun. A star. The one fixed light in his heaven. The tower on his horizon. The voice that sang with him in the darkness. “Never,” she said. “I will die—but I will never, never leave you. I am with you forever, now.”

Clara had flown off, becoming a story of her own. River, though, meant it—she would always be tied to him, alive or dead, together or apart.

“In one hundred years the cherry trees on Argetha are going to bloom perfectly,” he said. “On the fifth day of Porax, in the early morning, they will be so beautiful that the event was recorded by the Gallifreyan artist Drexol, in a painting that hangs in the museum on the Mountain of Serenity on Gallifrey, preserved for all time. The most beautiful blooms were on the Avenue des Charcuteries, in the park opposite Paoli’s. I’ll meet you there.”

She nodded, eyes misty. “It’s a date. The fifth of Porax, breakfast date, Paoli’s. What should I wear?”

“Yourself,” he said, and as usual he failed to quite get why she laughed. Who cared what she wore, so long as she was his River?

She nodded, though, and stepped through the jump-ship door. “I’ll be there with bells on.”

“Oh, now, that’s a little over the top, don’t you think?” he asked, already imagining the distracting jingle as she stalked out to the table he would reserve for them out on the pavement opposite the park. She only laughed, though, and let the door of the jump-ship close, and minutes later she was gone.

He stood, then, feeling the Vashta Nerada begin to stir, anxious to reach the open crates he’d left on the marble of the foyer. He probed the ache left by her passage back into life. He would, he knew, never again be so sure of her—so certain of her “indestructible” survival. But it was worth it, to have set her free, released her from the prison of her own death.

Humans loved like this, he thought. Never knowing when “happily ever after” would turn a quick verbal corner and become “the end.” They were both gone, now—Clara into her own narrative. River—perhaps, if he was lucky, to run forever opposite his.

He stepped into his Tardis. He made a note—a breakfast date he would not miss, on the fifth of Porax, to see the cherry blossoms turn the park opposite Paoli’s into an ocean of rose-pink, as he and his wife drank tea and laughed. Then he did what he knew Clara would tell him to do, and took a quick detour into London, in 2015, to find a companion, because he was always, always better when he wasn’t alone….


End file.
